


Family Matters

by CalvinPitt



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: ChestnutFest, Family Feels, Public Speaking, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-19 15:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20659721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CalvinPitt/pseuds/CalvinPitt
Summary: Marron's family might be a little different, but it's still a family.





	Family Matters

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Chestnutfest, Day 4, All About Marron. I really wanted to contribute something, so here it is.
> 
> There was a post on tumblr, wish I could remember which one, that suggested the idea of Marron having to do a family tree exercise for school, and Krillin and 18 scrambling to fill that in. I didn't want to steal the idea outright, but the idea that Marron would regard her somewhat unusual family as perfectly normal appealed to me.
> 
> Other than Marron, all the characters listed are only referred to. They don't actually show up.
> 
> Also, I have no idea how old Marron is in this. At least double digits, but probably closer to high school. I claim no accuracy with regards to how kids would speak. I don't even remember how I sounded when i did presentations in school (other than nervous).

“Marron,” the teacher said without looking up from her desk, “you’re up.”

Marron walked to the front of the class, trying to calm her nerves. She didn’t like speaking in front of the class. She was normally cheerful and outgoing, and found it easy to talk with people. Talking to people, while they just sit and stare, that was another matter. And for this, a presentation about her family history, she didn’t want to screw up. It was only a few minutes, but still, her family was important to her.

Practicing at home hadn’t gone too well. Goten and Trunks kept making faces and fart noises during it, then Bulma or Chi-chi would yell at them to quiet down, which was distracting, too. Her dad suggested picturing the rest of her class in their underwear, but Marron guessed her expression said that was a bad idea. He quickly retracted that suggestion, and reminded her of the breathing exercises he taught her when they meditated.

Her mom admitted she didn’t have much advice, which made sense. Mom didn’t talk to a lot of people anyway, and Marron couldn’t picture her being nervous if she did. More likely the audience would be nervous, considering the number of times Marron could remember her mom dealing with some jerk shouting stuff at her in public by glaring until he apologized tearfully.

Mrs. Briefs had actually been helpful, telling Marron to remember she knew her topic very well, and to focus on speaking with confidence. Don’t worry about the audience, just let them blur and focus on her speech.

Reaching the front, Marron faced the board for a moment, taking a small breath to steady her nerves, then turned to face the class. For just a moment, she locked onto the bored, half-asleep look on Zuchiri’s face in the front row. She wrenched her eyes up, to a point on the back wall, and started.

“My family didn’t form like a lot of families, but we’re just as close, because we’ve been through a lot. My mom’s only family is her brother. They’re twins, but he has dark hair. I don’t know my grandparents, because they never met them. The man that raised them was very mean, so my mom and Uncle Juunanagou moved away from him as soon as they could. He passed away before I was born, but I don’t think they would count him as family if he was alive.”

Her dad had been pretty insistent Marron leave out the point where Uncle killed the Bastard. Marron got it. They couldn’t exactly explain the Bastard - that was how Mom referred to Gero, Marron overheard her one night as she went back to bed after getting some water and passed by her parents’ bedroom – had experimented on Mom and Uncle to try and make them kill Uncle Goku. She didn’t know exactly what her mom and uncle went through, but it was bad enough to give her mother nightmares still, years after. And given how calm her mom always was – unless she or dad were in danger – that told Marron it must have been awful.

“My mom and uncle had one other sibling. Uncle Juuroku wasn’t a blood relative, but he was raised by the same man as them, and he left with them. But he passed away before I was born, too, trying to help some people in trouble. My mom says even though he didn’t say much, and didn’t like to fight, he protected her and my uncle when they were in trouble. He really liked birds and animals, and I think that’s why my uncle is a park ranger.”

Marron was guessing on that one, Uncle Juunanagou had certainly never said anything about it. But she had heard him and Mom discuss Juuroku, and she could tell how fond they both were of him, so she thought it was a decent guess.

“My dad doesn’t know who his parents were, either, because he was raised in a monastery. I do have a grandpa, Master Roshi, because my dad left the monastery when he was 11 and traveled to Master Roshi’s to learn martial arts from him, and he lived there for a long time. Grandpa used to play board games with me when Mom and Dad had to go to the mainland to run errands. He has a turtle friend who lives there, he would go swimming with me and make sure I was OK. My mom says Grandpa Roshi is a pervert, because he likes watching aerobics, but my dad says Grandpa used to be worse."

Her dad argued against that line, but mom insisted that Roshi was not going to skate by on his flaws. So his dad asked her to add that last part, but reading it aloud again, Marron wasn’t sure it helped.

“My dad has a brother, too, my Uncle Goku. They aren’t related, but Uncle was raised by a student of Grandpa’s and then came to learn from Grandpa at the same time my dad did. My dad didn’t like Uncle Goku originally, but they became best friends and fought together and helped people a lot. My dad says Uncle and Grandpa helped him feel like he mattered to someone, and so they both mean a lot to him.”

Like with her mother’s treatment at the Bastard’s hands, Marron didn’t know exactly what her dad suffered through at the monastery. But she knew it had hurt him, and she hated that someone did that to her dad, just like she hated the Bastard for hurting her mother and uncle. She didn’t understand wanting to hurt people like that.

“Uncle would take me to the carnival sometimes with his younger son, Goten. It was always a lot of fun, because Uncle would let us eat all the cotton candy we wanted, unless he ate all of it first. He always says he won’t do that, but he always does. Then my mom says she’s going to kill him like she was supposed to, and Uncle Goku laughs and leaves really fast.”

Marron thought she heard a few laughs at that line and was glad she’d left it in. No one would believe it was sort of true, and Marron knew her mom wouldn’t really try to do that. She wouldn’t want Aunt Chi-Chi yelling at her about sending her husband to the Other World again.

“Everyone in our family helps each other out when we need them. My parents met because my mom and Uncles Juunanagou and Kuuroku were in trouble, and my dad wanted to help them. When my Uncle Juunanagou was away on some family business, Goten and I, and our friend Trunks looked after the preserve he protects with my Aunt Haru and her two kids. Aunt Haru was really nice and patient with us, since we didn’t know what we were doing at first, and made sure we understood the animals were supposed to be protected, not played with.”

They had been so busy trying to get dinosaur rides, they’d almost let aliens take off with some mammoths, until they noticed Haru firing a rocket launcher at the ship. After the animals were safe, Haru hadn't yelled, just reminded them patiently they had promised to help while Uncle was away.

“When my Uncle Goku was away, my dad helped Aunt Chi-Chi and Gohan with stuff around the house. Running errands, or spending time with Gohan and Goten so Auntie could rest sometimes. When I was born, my mom says Aunt Chi-Chi helped a lot, because my mom didn’t know what to do, and my dad overreacted to everything. Auntie would help them understand what was happening and help them calm down. Sometimes we’d come to visit and go play in the lake near their house before lunch, and she taught me how to swim, and she beat up any fish that would get too close.”

Once Marron was old enough to understand a few things, like how many large, dangerous animals lived near the Son household, had been surprised her parents would let her go off with Chi-Chi and splash around in a lake full of massive fish. Of course, Marron hadn’t known that Gohan was the strongest person on the planet at the time, but she had figured out that as protective as both her parents were, they knew Chi-Chi would protect her just as fiercely.

“My family didn’t really form the way a lot of people’s do, but it’s still a family. We all help each other and look out for each other, and that’s the important part of a family. Thank you.”

Marron gave a short bow, and walked quickly back to her desk, taking a deep, relieved exhale as she did. She heard the same polite applause all the presentations before hers had gotten, which was fine. If there had been dead silence, she’d be worried she said too much. She could tell her face had turned red while she’d been talking, but she thought she’d done OK. Once she got started, she really had barely noticed the audience.

“Thank you, Marron,” the teacher said absently, still not looking up from her desk. “Minato, you’re up next. . .”

**Author's Note:**

> I figure Krillin and 18 would have told Marron certain things about their pasts, if only because Marron probably picked up on some of it and then asked questions, as kids do, but they left out the uglier details.
> 
> I also figure when Marron was younger, starting school, she was more casual about mentioning some of the aspects of her everyday life people would find odd. Like her Uncle Goku teleporting into their living room, or Trunks and Goten turning Super Saiyan to fight her mom at the World's Martial Arts Tournament. The file they have on her at school probably describes her as having an "overactive imagination".
> 
> It's more likely Krillin would teach Marron to swim, but for some reason I like the idea of Chi-Chi doing it.
> 
> Zuchiri was me trying to figure how Toriyama would would turn "zucchini" into a name for someone.


End file.
